12/12/2012

Feds: US seizes Mexico politician's condo over drugs

Daniel Aguilar / Reuters, file

Tomas Yarrington, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, seen in Mexico City May 23, 2005, is a fugitive over suspicions he aided drug traffickers.

By Reuters

MCALLEN, Texas -- The U.S. government seized a luxury Texas condominium purportedly owned by a fugitive former Mexican governor wanted on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors for the southern district of Texas said the $640,000 condominium on South Padre Island is owned by the former governor of Mexico's Tamaulipas state, Tomas Yarrington, also the former national leader of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

Prosecutors allege that the property was purchased with money that came from Mexican drug traffickers.

Yarrington served as governor of Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2004 and unsuccessfully ran for president in 2005. Before that, he was mayor of Matamoros, the U.S.-Mexican border hometown of the Gulf Cartel, once one of that country's dominant drug-trafficking gangs.

In June, Yarrington denied the allegations against him in the United States, although he has still not come forward to face a warrant issued for his arrest in Mexico in August.

As protesters clashed, incoming Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said he aims to reduce drug-related violence, which has killed more than 60,000 people in the last six years. NBC's Lester Holt has more.

Senior PRI politicians say in private Yarrington could end up behind bars to show the party is serious about fighting corruption.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzalez Ramos granted the government's motion to take full possession of the condo, sell it and pay off taxes and homeowners' association fees owed, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release.

The government expects to sell the property at a public auction "in the near future."

A civil forfeiture complaint alleges that Napoleon Rodriguez, a business associate of Yarrington, made a straw purchase of the condo in 1998 so the politician would avoid attention from U.S. authorities.